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Attendance Matters, which has been supported by The Vancouver
Sun Children’s Fund Adopt-a-School initiative since 2011, has
resulted in a substantial drop in absenteeism rates among children
from kindergarten to grade three, according to statistics collected
by the Surrey school district.

Statistics show the highest rates of chronic absenteeism
occurred in 2010/11, before AM was launched and supported by
Adopt-a-School. Chronic absenteeism is defined as a child missing
more than 10 days of school in a school year. Statistics show that
chronic absenteeism among children from kindergarten to grade three
will make them less likely to graduate than other students.

Among the AM schools studied, the drop in absenteeism among chronically absent K-3 students averaged 12 per cent, in some schools it was as high as 50 per cent.

For example, Hjorth Road Elementary 42% of students in grades
K-3 were chronically absent. This number dropped by more than half,
to less than 20 per cent of K-3 students being chronically absent by
2014/15, the most recent statistics available.

The Vancouver Sun Children’s Fund Adopt-a-School initiative
currently supports 20 Attendance Matters programs in Surrey. The
school district has applied to AAS for $100,000 to pay for the
Attendance Matters breakfasts, which plays a major part in
attracting needy children to school.

The Vancouver Sun’s seventh annual Adopt-A-School
campaign is under way, and we are again asking readers to consider
the plight of children who come to school unfed, improperly dressed
and suffering the psychological effects of living in poverty.

We are not talking about a few children. We are
talking about thousands.

They are found in every school district in this
province, no exceptions.

Last year the Vancouver Sun Children’s Fund, which
administers Adopt-A-School (AAS), distributed $604,000 in emergency
funds to 86 schools across the province to help alleviate the most
two most common forms of suffering — hunger and lack of proper clothing.

And while much of the money was spent in this way,
there were also grants to help teachers heal some of the
psychological damage to children whose lives are so blighted by
poverty that they are arriving in school at their wit’s end.

Money was spent on supplying and equipping sensory
rooms where children can decompress and be soothed into a state
where they can function and learn and on other therapeutic programs
that teachers tell us they need.

“Since AAS began in 2011 we have sent almost $4 million
to teachers and principals struggling to deal with the effects of
poverty, in almost all cases, without resources,” said Harold Munro,
editor of the Vancouver Sun and The Province and chair of The
Vancouver Sun Children’s Fund board.

When a parent shows up at a school in tears with no
food in the home and no money to buy any what are they supposed to
do?

It happens regularly in schools all across the province.

“For teachers and principals it must be heartbreaking
and this newspaper does not think it right that this burden should
be borne by them alone,” Munro said.

“We are all in this together, these are our children
and it is immoral to ignore the wants of the poor.”

AAS has:

* Provided money for emergency food vouchers.

* Supported programs that distribute food in order to
get impoverished families through the weekend.

* Bought beds to get children off the floor, or to
replace those infested with bedbugs.

* Bought lice kits.

* Provided money to a special unit that deals with the
most vulnerable students in danger of being sexually exploited or
tempted to join gangs for no other reason than not having enough
money to buy a meal or a decent winter coat.

It has got to the point that we are seeing not only
concern from adults but from students.

The last campaign showed that children in the Gulf
Islands were bringing extra food to feed hungry friends who had
none. In Langley three teenagers set up their own program to feed
needy families over weekends.

This campaign tell the story of how high school
students in a Vancouver school have been moved to organize their own
breakfast program after discovering that a quarter of the school’s
students were without food at home at least once during a month.

So the problem is obvious to school districts,
principal, teachers and now other students.

The Vancouver Sun has never said a critical word about
any political party in relation to the AAS campaign, except to ask
the government of the day to do something.

We are repeating that request to this new government.

In the meantime we are again asking our readers to
support our campaign. Your generosity has carried us this far.

Vancouver Sun Children's Fund Adopt-a-School 17/18 Community

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